Virtualization

Rackable acquires Silicon Graphics, takes SGI name

Rackable Systems completed its acquisition of Silicon Graphics, Inc. on Monday and oddly enough, Rackable will adopt SGI as its global name and brand, instead of the other way around.

Rackable closed the transaction to acquire the debt-ridden Silicon Graphics (SGI) for $42.5 million in cash on May 8 and the company said it will change its name to Silicon Graphics International - or SGI - but will keep the Rackable Systems product line and ticker symbol (RACK) the same.

I wonder if abandoning the Rackable brand in favor of SGI is a good idea. Sure, SGI was hugely successful in the 1980’s and is still a more recognizable brand than Rackable because of its legacy, but SGI is also a failing brand that filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006 and again in April 2009 due to unmanageable amounts of debt.

In fact, I liken SGI to the captain of the high school football team; you know the type - a leader in its time, popular, and admired by all, but 20-some years later? Balding, broke, and holding desperately to what used to be.

Maybe I’m being too critical of SGI’s brand, but others question Rackable’s decision to take the SGI name as well. SGI is “Well known, sure. But more than a bit tarnished and not descriptive of Rackable’s business,” said Illuminata Analyst Gordon Haff.

Coincidentally, Sun Microsystems Inc. was founded the same year as SGI - 1982 - and they, too, are being acquired this year, by Oracle Corp. (Oracle won’t be dropping its name for Sun Microsystems though. )

Either way, Rackable now has a much larger portfolio of high performance computing products, with SGI’s x86 cluster offerings, shared memory clustered compute products, scalable data center and storage technologies, modular data centers, data management software, HPC tools and visualization technologies.

SGI will maintain its corporate headquarters in its current Fremont, California facility, with offices around the world, and the new management team will have senior executives from Rackable Systems and the former SGI.

Boston Marathon website prepares for traffic surge

About a million people will visit the Boston Marathon website on Monday to check out the 113th annual race, so the IT pros supporting the website have been hard at work these past few weeks making sure the site doesn’t crash that day.

The Boston Athletic Association (BAA)’s technical director, John Burgholzer, spends three weeks prior to the race building the infrastructure at a colocation facility in Massachusetts to support the BAA’s website and other technologies surrounding the marathon, like the new AT&T Athlete Alert System, which delivers text messages to people who are tracking runners whenever their runners hits a checkpoint.

Burgholzer, who owns a technology consultancy company in North Reading, MA called Information Overload, uses Hewlett Packard (HP) blade servers to run everything. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t go the virtualization route, which would probably be quicker and easier, because he doesn’t know enough about it or trust the technology to handle the surge of users during race time.

“We haven’t tried out virtualization at all and I’m not sure we would. We get about 50,000 to 60,000 concurrent connections at peak time during the race, and I’m not sure virtualization would work for us performance wise,” Burgholzer said.

I’ve heard this apprehension about virtualization before, so it appears the technology is not as pervasive as companies like VMware would have us believe. Mainly because guys like Burgholzer are far too busy to learn about an entirely new technology, especially when their traditional approach works just fine for them.

So, Burgholzer adds seven HP ProLiant blade servers to the two that are typically used to run the website, for a total of nine blades running Windows 2003. HP blade servers were the right choice for the BAA because the servers require little space and are easier to manage that rack mount systems, plus, the organization had been using HP gear even before Burgholzer came on board nine years ago, and HP has always been “extremely helpful” at race time, he said.

Before the BAA moved from “a bunch of pizza boxes” to HP c-class blade servers in 2007, cabling and management “was a nightmare,” Burgholzer said. “We would build the data center up before the race using rented systems and people didn’t really care how it was set up, so we had a rats’ nest of cables in the back of the rack,” he said.

By switching to blade servers, the cabling is not an issue; he just slides new blades into the chassis as needed, and the management software makes configuartion easy, he said. The chassis has one gigabyte Ethernet connections on both the front and back ends of the server chassis, which he says are plenty, and he uses F5 Networks technology for load balancing.

With all of that, he’s confident there won’t be any issues with the website on Monday - knock on wood. “We have a pretty well-tuned website now; there was a bit of a bandwidth problem in 2007 and at the peak of the race we have seen the website running slower, but we have gotten it down now,” he said.

The day after the race, Burgholzer will start looking for ways to improve the website and new features to add for next year.

Cisco’s Unified Computing System strategy; smart move?

I tuned in to Cisco’s web-based news conference yesterday to hear about their first server platform within the Unified Computing System, and my eyes are still rolling today.

Instead of showing off the new system - which they refer to as “the new movement” - with some demonstrations, we watched 90 minutes of Cisco’s CEO John Chambers and partners Intel, BMC, Microsoft, EMC and VMware congratulating each other on being masters of the universe. Good thing I had that barf bag nearby.

After Cisco and its partners were done talking about how revolutionary this new system is and how much they love each other, one reporter basically asked, where’s the beef? “We have been hearing about the California server for weeks now, but you haven’t mentioned anything about a server. Is this announcement related to that?,” he asked.

Before Chambers let his trusty engineer answer the question, he thanked all of his partners again. The Cisco engineer then reiterated  their strategy with this system while carefully avoiding the term “blade server” because the system is more than just that. And round, and round we went.

Bottom line, the system is a chassis full of Cisco UCS B-Series blades bundled with networking, storage and virtualization features. Take the pieces apart, and you have Cisco’s first blade servers. Some people may also have found it interesting that the Intel Nehalem-based servers come in both full and half depth options, so you can pack a ton of the half-depth boxes into a chassis (assuming they don’t throw off crazy amounts of heat).

So the fact that Cisco’s talking-head-style news conference was absolute torture doesn’t make the system itself any less interesting from a server market perspective. We already know their networking stuff works, so they really just have to prove themselves with some solid server engineering to compete with the existing x86 providers. (Cisco, I know you say you aren’t competing with those guys, but you are).

And in many ways, Cisco has come full-circle by introducing a server, said Anne Skamarock, a research director with the analyst / consulting firm Focus.

“When I worked at Sun Microsystems back in the mid-1980’s they debated becoming a Cisco putting intelligent switches (read: specialized servers) in the network. So in a very real sense, Cisco has been building servers for years – servers designed specifically for the work of switching,” Skamarock said. “If you think about it, the first “blade servers” were produced in the networking space years ago adding a form factor for multiple switches from the horizontal to the vertical.”

Cisco also talked about how much this system will save companies because it “radically reduces the number of devices and the required setup, management, power/cooling, and cabling,” but they didn’t talk about the acquisition cost. A Cisco spokesperson said they can not release any pricing details until April, but I am betting it is not a small number.

Even so, if Cisco has engineered a solid server and the system as a whole proves to be of good value, the Unified Computing System concept will catch on, but we aren’t sure when these systems will actually hit the commercial market.

And I’m sure server vendors like HP, Dell and IBM will follow suit with their own “me-too” unified systems similar to Cisco’s. Actually, those companies may even end up using their top networking partner for the plumbing. After all, in terms of virtualization, Cisco has come up with important technologies like VLANs and VSANs, which are now industry standards.

The way I see it, by creating this “new” market of Unified Computing Systems, Cisco is setting itself up for success in both the networking market and the server market.

NFL’s biggest game supported by IBM’s smallest system

If you watched the Steelers win their sixth Super Bowl last night, everything you heard from the press and all the stats from NFL.com came from IBM’s BladeCenter S system.

Yup, all the operations for the largest sporting event in America ran on IBM’s smallest systems, the BladeCenter S, which is similar in size to a briefcase.

In addition to the big game, next month, IBM will officially announce that every one of the NFL’s 32 teams will be standardizing on BladeCenter S, according to Alex Yost, VP of IBM BladeCenters.

The BladeCenter S is actually designed for small to medium sized businesses that don’t have their own data center and need a compact, all-in-one piece of equipment, according to IBM. It is esentially a data center in a box that contains up to six IBM BladeCenter servers, 9 terabytes of local shared storage and networking components. Everything in the BladeCenter chassis is redundant – power, switching, cooling, and storage, so there is no worry about failures, either, Yost said.

As it turns out, this little data center box on wheels has made life for the NFL’s IT team a lot easier; in the past, for every Super Bowl, the NFL’s IT staff have had to lugg all the necessary servers, storage and networking to the event site and set up an entire data center within just a couple of weeks, said Jonathan Kelley director of infrastructure computing for the NFL.

As a long time IBM BladeCenter H customer that trusts IBM equipment, the NFL contacted IBM last year for some help setting up for the 2008 SuperBowl in Arizona - which this New England fan dares not discuss - and heard about the BladeCenter S.

“When the NFL came to IBM to help them set up multiple data centers for last years Super Bowl, our IBM BladeCenter S was still about three weeks away from deployment, but the NFL was confident enough in IBM to use a brand new type of server, and it went off without a hitch,” Yost said.

To support the operations of Super Bowl 44 last night, the NFL used four BladeCenter S chassis with eight, quad-core processor powered blade servers in them and about eight virtual machines running on each server to support security and credentialing for 60,000 temporary employees and around 11,000 media personell.

They also deployed about 300 PCs, wireless networks, and other necessary computing functions using IBM’s BladeCenter blades, said Joe Manto VP of Information Technology for the NFL.

“The operations at the NFL are all supported IBM blades. We chose them because their technology has proven itself,” Manto said. “These servers are almost over-engineered for what we do with them, and they are reliable.”

(The NFL wouldn’t disclose which CPU vendor they use, or name a specific virtualization vendor; they said they use a mix of virtualization vendors, but IBM reported the NFL uses VMware Inc.)

The BladeCenter S enclosure also has extra space for UPSs or other components that might need to be added, and plugs into a regular wall outlet and Ethernet connection.

“It is great for events because it is portable and can be configured at a partner site then shipped to the right location,” Yost said. “Also, their own storage can be connected to the Bladecenter S. It is super quiet and could be placed in office environments without worrying about the noise, and both the front and the back doors of the chassis lock.”

A tyical deployment is in the $15,000 range, the chassis itself is a few thousands dollars. Cost depends on the number of servers in it and other configurations, Yost said.

Gartner warns users of multi-core processing hazards

Gartner, Inc. reported this week that data centers are being attacked by processing cores at a rate their software, operating Systems and applications can’t handle.

“The relentless doubling of processors per microprocessor chip will drive the total processor counts of upcoming server generations to peaks well above the levels for which key software have been engineered,” Gartner reported. “Operating systems, middleware, virtualization tools and applications will all be affected, leaving organizations facing difficult decisions, hurried migrations to new versions and performance challenges as a consequence of this evolution.”

Wow. Sounds serious, huh? Maybe I am simplifying things a bit here, but doesn’t it make sense to upgrade to quad-core chips only if you have applications that can benefit from those chips? Otherwise, why spend the money?

I suppose I am being naive. Perhaps CPU cores are like crack, and once you get a taste of the power in a dual core chip, you want four cores, and then six, and will keep adding more and more cores until your systems are balls to the wall and your software implodes. It’s a vicious cycle, man.

In all seriousness though, people should be aware that throwing cores at applications does not automatically equal better performance; it’s been reported time and time again on SearchDataCenter.com since 2007 that not all your apps can use mutilple cores, because they aren’t written for paralellism.

According to Gartner, “the impact [of putting apps that aren't written for parellelism on multi-core chips] is akin to putting a Ferrari engine in a go-cart; the power may be there, but design mismatches severely limit the ability to exploit it.”

In fact, software developers are doing their best to design products that can take advantage of multiple cores, but find it hard to keep up with the tick-tock advancement model of Intel Corp. and AMD.

Many apps are designed to run on just one core, and work just fine in that one core. In this case, the software doesn’t know what to do with more than one core, and will actually run slower on multi-core chips. Of course, the processor makers don’t advertise this point.

“It’s important to understand that if the software developer doesn’t do something, the majority of software applications will run on a single core. The application will not leverage the multiple cores available and, in fact, the application may even get slower,” said Ray DePaul, president and CEO of RapidMind Inc., in Waterloo, Ont. “There is talk about 80-core processors (from Intel) now and this is scary to software developers. They can’t wrap their head around how that is going to work.”

Meanwhile, organizations get double the number of processors in each chip generation, approximately every two years, according to Gartner. Each generation of microprocessor, with its doubling of processor counts through some combination of more cores and more threads per core, turns the same number of sockets into twice as many processors. “In this way a 32-socket, high-end server with eight core chips in the sockets would deliver 256 processors in 2009. In two years, with 16 processors per socket appearing on the market, the machine swells to 512 processors in total. Four years from now, with 32 processors per socket shipping, that machine would host 1,024 processors,” Gartner reported.

There are apps inherently designed to use multiple cores, like heavy workloads used in virtualization, Java, expansive databases and complex enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Apps like these use more than one core and perform up to 50% better on multi-core chips, according to analysts.

So, heed Gartner’s warning and don’t go core-crazy; do your research and make sure the apps you run on multi-core chips before you take money from your tight IT budgets to buy them.

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Dell shipping Egenera PAN Manager on PowerEdge servers - finally

Dell announced today it has officially begun shipping Egenera’s Processor Area Network (PAN) Manager software on its PowerEdge servers sold in North America, nine months after originally announcing it would do so.

When Dell first reported it planned to ship Malboro, Mass.-based Egenera’s PAN Manager software, it was slated for availability by June. Dell did not respond to questions regarding the delay by the time of this posting.

But, now that it is shipping, PAN Manager software will extend beyond the hypervisor and virtualizes I/O infrastructure on Dell PowerEdge servers, including Ethernet network interface cards, Fibre Channel, host bus adapters (HBAs), and Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches.

By virtualizing I/O, PAN Manager essentially creates an entire virtual datacenter where nothing is tied to physical hardware, applications or operating systems. This allows IT to allocate compute, storage, and network resources wherever and whenever necessary. The software also manages both physical and virtual resources under one pane of glass. A demo of how it works is available here, on Egenera’s website.

With PAN Manager software, Dell will have a strength against competitors with virtualization management tools, such as Hewlett Packard Co. and its Virtual Connect software, which pools and abstracts the local area network and storage area network (SAN) connections to servers and virtual machines (VMs) in HP’s BladeSystems.

When Dell first announced its partnership with Egenera, Ideas International analyst Jim Burton posted a blog stating, “In today’s market, Dell can compete very effectively with other vendors on simple server virtualization and SANs. But what it lacks is a management tool that can pull everything together into an entirely virtualized datacenter. That is where PAN Manager comes into play. With PAN Manager, Dell leaps over many of its competitors with the ability to create the virtualized datacenter of the future today using inexpensive industry-standard components…We at IDEAS feel the OEM relationship is a win-win for Dell and Egenera, as well as the customers of both companies”

Unlike other software that Dell resells, PAN Manager is integrated with the Dell hardware in the factory. “That means the customer doesn’t have to worry about installing software, and all the pieces work together correctly with multiple vendors. Dell also provides any professional services and offers first line support on Dell / PAN Systems,” said Christine Crandell, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Egenera.

PAN software existed only on Egenera’s BladeFrame products until November 2007, when the company opened it up to third-party hardware. Fujitsu Siemens Computers was the first official OEM, and Egenera PAN Manager is now integrate into its Primergy server line as well.

Server sales suffer on economy, virtualization; vendors branching out

With the U.S. economy in a recession, world economies suffering and virtualization adoption on the rise, it comes as no surprise that factory revenue in the x86 worldwide server market declined 5.2% year over year to $12.6 billion in the third quarter of 2008 (3Q08), according to the IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker released December 3.

In fact, this is the largest quarterly revenue decline for servers since the fourth quarter of 2002, and the sluggish server unit shipment growth of 2.8% year over year in 3Q08 represented the slowest increase in server shipments since 4Q06, the IDC reported.

“The x86 server segment was definitely impacted by the economic downturn; there was significant deceleration in the quarter with a particular weakness in September,” said Jed Scaramella, IDC Senior Research Analyst, Servers. “Due to the uncertainty in the market, customers cut back on all nonessential spending.”

Volume systems revenue declined 7.2% year over year in the third quarter, the first decline for this market segment in more than 14 quarters, and revenue for mid-range enterprise servers declined 9.5% year over year. Shipment growth also slowed significantly for x86 servers to 4.0% (1.97 million units) because of a low demand, and revenue declined 6.6% year over year in 3Q08, representing the largest year-over-year decline for the segment in more than 24 quarters, IDC reported.

The IDC didn’t mention this in their release today, but it is obvious that virtualization is partly to blame the slowing demand for commodity x86 servers because it increases server utilization.  According to Tom Bittman, VP and distinguished analyst with Gartner, virtualization has penetrated 12% of the market, and the number of VMs deployed doubles every year. “By 2012, we expect more than half x86 workloads will be run on VMs,” Bittman said in an interview about his presentation on the virtualization market for Gartner’s 27th annual Data Center Conference this week.

“Virtualization and cloud computing have screwed up the market; vendors used to compete in compute islands, they were all direct competitors, but now they fight for control of an entire virtual layer. IBM and HP are competing in broad server technologies, instead of HP and IBM competing only in the area of server hardware,” Bittman said. “All vendors worry about becoming commodities and they all want to be considered the brains of the industry”

Perhaps that concern, along with slow server sales, is why vendors including HP, Dell and Sun have branched out into the area of data center services this year that could add a revenue stream beyond selling hardware. HP acquired EYP Mission Critical Facilities about a year ago and began offering data center services in March. Just this week, Dell announced it would offer services to help people extend the life of their data centers. Before that, Sun announced data center services that include data wiping.

But, there were exceptions to the grim server market numbers; revenue for high-end enterprise servers grew 4.0% year over year, the third consecutive quarter of growth for the segment. Other exceptions to the slowdown were blade servers (11% of the market) and IBM System z (9.4% of the market), which both increased this quarter, IDC reported.

Scaramella said IBM System Z sales didn’t suffer because they tend to be cyclical and are built into companies long-term budgets, which is not always the case for the smaller x86 systems. “Customer are more likely to push out [x86] purchases and see what they can do without,” he said.

And blades were the only platform to experience positive growth in the quarter, with all major vendors exhibiting double-digit growth in blade volumes, IDC reported.

I’m no analyst, but I am guessing the demand for blades didn’t slow down along with other x86 servers because today’s blades are pitched as ideal virtualization platforms. The HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade, for instance, is one of many new blades designed with more memory, data storage and network connections to meet the needs of memory and I/O-hungry VMs.

In addition to their appeal as a virtualization platform, blade servers are desirable because they take up very little space in cramped data centers and many blade surpass rack servers in power and efficiency.

So, it will be interesting to see whether server sales recover when the world economies improve, or if they remain depressed due to the increasing use of virtualization.

The IDC is predicting this slowdown to continue throughout most of 2009, but server sales will rebound with the economy, Scaramella said. “We are not anticipating a quick rebound [but] I do not think we will see the same extreme fall-off the market experienced after the dot.com bust,” he said. “At that time there was a tremendous amount of excess capacity built out in the infrastructure. Over the past few years, many companies have been in a consolidation mode - reducing the numbers of servers they have in operations as well as reducing the number of data centers they have in operations. Back in 2001-2002, companies were able to put off purchase due to the excess capacity, this is not the case today.”

HP’s energy efficiency crusade to control server, data center power

A few Hewlett Packard (HP) executives visited with me yesterday to discuss their Green data center mission - and surprisingly, they admit that it doesn’t always mean using HP hardware.

They started off our meeting with a discussion about new and existing server power control tools, which I’m not convinced many IT admins actually take advantage of.

HP’s new Dynamic Power Capping tool within Insight Power Manager lets IT set power caps on HP servers based on peak load trends to prevent over-provisioning of power. The cap can be set on single servers or on an entire chassis of blade servers, and can also be based on user-defined policies, according to HP’s VP of Enterprise Server and Storage Infrastructure Software Mark Linesch.

HP’s ProLiant servers shipped within the past few years already have the hardware for this feature baked into them, so ProLiant users need only do a firmware upgrade to add the Dynamic Power Capping feature, Linesch said.

“HP has invested a huge amount of money in green technology not just for the sake of being green. It has very practical implications that save companies significant amounts of money,” Linesch said.

Other companies offer power capping features on their servers as well, including IBM. IT can set a power cap for IBM servers and IBM BladeCenter systems via Active Energy Manager firmware, when the firmware supports capping.

These tools sound great, but I question whether or not power capping features are actually being used in data centers. I’d like to hear from users about this; power control features have existed on servers for many years, but does anyone use them? Is a tool like HP’s Dynamic Power Capping a viable option for virtualized servers?

HP’s execs also told me about their vendor-neutral data center efficiency consultancy services. Since HP’s acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities Inc. a year ago this month, HP  has offered vendor agnostic consulting services to data centers to help them (for a fee) measure energy efficiency, without any pressure to use HP equipment, said Bill Kosik, energy and sustainability director of HP’s EYP Mission Critical Facilities group.

“That was actually part of the deal when we were acquired; we wanted to stay vendor neutral and we have been able to do that,” Kosik said.

So far, HP’s EYP group has performed consultancy work (including thermal mapping and energy analysis) for about 30 data centers that are either on the brink of a major power consumption dilemna or in a transition phase and need help planning, designing and developing their data center, Kosik said.

On November 3, HP announced new EYP services packaged in a tidy bundle, as vendors love to do, called HP Energy Efficiency Design and Analysis Services, which includes energy efficiency analysis and design services that help data centers meet compliance regulations like those from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

And of course, HP isn’t the only company offering  data center efficiency software and services to data centers these days. The list is long, which is great for consumers.

Eight reasons data center managers should thank Wall Street

Earlier this week I spoke with Rob Gardos, the CEO of the New York-based IT automation company GridApp Systems, about his paper “Eight Reasons Data Center Managers should thank Wall Street for the Financial Meltdown.”

As a reporter, I am keenly aware that when it comes to spinning crap into silk, product vendors are pros. So I was pretty skeptical when I saw the title of his paper.

So I asked Gardos to explain why in the world data center managers should thank anyone for the economic cesspool in which they now exist.

For starters, companies have had to reduce their head count because of the economy, so they have half the IT staff to do the same amount of work, he said.

And this is good?

Well, no, but data centers can’t have servers failing left and right and unorganized systems when there are fewer people to manage the issues. “This meltdown has accelerated the path to something dramatically more efficient,” Gardos said. “People are coming up with a new paradigm and are finding ways to improve their systems, because they have to. People are looking at how to minimize costs and how to cut down on tasks that don’t add value to the organization.”

Now that it is time to tighten ship, Gardos said data centers are doing things that will result in long-term benefits:

1.  Reducing costs, energy consumption and waste. Businesses have to find ways to minimize energy costs in the data center, reduce overspending on compliance efforts and automate time-consuming tasks.

2. Core data center priorities. IT professionals have seen the true centrality of product and project performance to company competitiveness. The downturn is to thank for the newfound clarity and redefined priorities.

3. Frugality. Businesses are forced to check line items and cut frivolous spending. This nuisance is a blessing in disguise and will improve spending for years to come.
4. Innovation. IT decision makers and managers have put their heads together to improve efficiency, productivity and competitiveness. This trial-by-fire brainstorming cbreathe new life into companies.

5. Cultivating talent. This includes talent. There is a surplus of once untouchable and highly qualified IT professionals swimming around. IT managers can beef up their staff for less.

6. Green IT. Ideas for operational savings have actually provoked businesses to engage in greening techniques. Many companies will emerge with lowered costs and a greener data center.

7. Competitiveness. Businesses are learning to do more with less, and those habits will continue after the crisis and improve competitiveness in times of prosperity.

8. Long-term benefits. Things are tight now but will the downturn actually spur budget increases in the post-short term for projects that have been placed on the backburner? Lessons learned may actually induce additional spending on virtualization, automation and other cost-savings initiatives.

Of course, it should be noted here that GridApp provides data center automation equipment and would probably love to see data centers using its tools, but Gardos made an effort to remain vendor neutral during our discussion.

“It is clear that infrastructure management and automation will drive efficiency forward – -things like [IT automation software company] BladeLogic make a lot of sense when there are fewer employees to do the work,” Gardos said. “Companies have to change their processes to do more with fewer people, and get more value out of the people the company has.”

He made some good points , and I wonder how many companies now lay off employees only to find themselves buying expensive software to automate the tasks their staff once performed. Seems likely that the data center automation market could ultimately benefit from these hard economic times.

Data Center efficiency tips and tricks from Data Center Decisions

The overarching theme of the Data Center Decisions conference in Chicago last week was energy; how much data centers use, how much they pay for it, and how much they could be saving. 

The keynote addresses on both days of the conference, October 24 & 24, covered data center efficiency at length, with plenty of tips and resources to help data centers cut back on power consumption, though it appears that not many people are taking the necessary measures to reduce consumption. Because of this, government plans to step in and mandate power saving measures to prevent future climate change.

As awful as this sounds, government intervention is a necessary measure at this point, because facility spending has increased tremendously over the past two years with no end in sight, and with all of this additional compute capacity, the outlook for the environment is grim.

The energy required to power and cool a single server emits four tons of greenhouse gases, so by 2012, data centers worldwide will exceed greenhouse gas emissions of the airline industry, according to Ken Brill, President and Executive Director for the Uptime Institute, who gave a keynote address called “Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency” on October 24 based on the McKinsey / Uptime Institute report.

So, why has data center power consumption spun out of control? In addition to the increasing demands from Web 2.0, 80% of today’s compute demand is performed on distributed systems with only 5% to 20% utilization rates, whereas before 1980, mainframes were used, and at much higher utilization rates, Brill said.

The way to reverse the trend sounds easy enough; use virtualization to consolidate systems and increase server utilization rates, and also kill comatose servers.

Simple as these steps sound, it can be difficult to do when you don’t keep track of servers to know their utilization rates, Brill said. In this case, implementing a formal de-commissioning program using ITIL to document, bill back and audit the systems is a first step. 

“If we want to become energy efficient we have to become better engineers,” Brill said.

Other measures that can make a major impact are correctly setting the cooling unit set point, shutting off humidification and de-humidification functions, implementing hot aisle/cold aisle containment, turning off unneeded cooling units, and if possible, increasing eco-friendly water side cooling, Brill said.

Data centers that are adding hardware should make an effort to buy efficient power supplies and hardware, which all the major vendors offer, and rightsize memory to avoid using excess power, Brill said

If your asking yourself who in IT has enough extra time to do all of these things, Brill had a suggestion for that, too; appoint an “Energy Czar” - someone who cares about the environment and wasting power - to make sure the data center facilities and operations are as efficient as possible.

Of course, the Energy Czar could also get a bonus here and there for lowering the company power bills, which most certainly will happen when even some of the above measures are implemented.

Companies can also use efficiency software tools or hire outside consultants to help increase energy efficiency, and there are plenty of choices today.